Hyacinth
by J. D. Devereux
Summary: Sanny was a typical thirteen-going-on-fourteen year old girl before the Change affected her small, minnesotan town. On the day of her birthday party, all of the adults dissapear from the town -- what do Sanny and the others do? ON HIATUS! PATIENCE!
1. Birthday Blues

A/N: I've been looking for a good place to use Sanny's name – and here it is. I always thought I'd use it in a House fic . . . I guess I was wrong.

Summary: How did The Change affect other places around the world? Was Shade the only one of his kind? Out of my mind, I've envisioned how a small town like mine would deal with The Change if it's to come.

A/N: Also – I don't own anything -- except of course the USB Flash Drive with the green zip-tie that both I and Sanny tend to chew on.

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I had what was basically a full ring of keys hanging out of my mouth. It was the basic ring, plus my front and back door house keys, and a caribiner, along with a light, my USB Flash Drive – and a green zip tie.

The zip-tie was in my mouth. I was chewing on it – but I should be talking about what happened that day, and not what I was chewing on.

It all started the day before my birthday.

It was August 5th – the day before my fourteenth birthday, and I was at the Ortho getting my braces tightened. I came out with the inside of my mouth hurting like a mofo. The start of the day was not very good. I'd had to get up at six o`clock for the Ortho appointment, and here I was, my mouth aching, on a two-hour long car ride back to my dorky little small town in Minnesota. We got back around noon – and, lo and behold, chewing on the zip-tie relieved a bit of my pain! (I've been chewing on it ever since.) I wasn't looking forward to going home – because my sister had started moving her stuff onto the college campus in Duluth – she was accepted to the U of MD (University of Minnesota, Duluth branch – for you non Minnesotans.)

But, here I was, dreading coming home and chewing on a zip-tie. If I had known what was coming, I'd have called John and the others earlier for the final back-to-school party. We were all biking down to the park by the library for the party. (The library becomes _very_ important later – I tell you!)

When we arrived home, I pulled out my cell phone and started dialing friends about the time. First John – since he lived closest. Then onto Bekkah, Dan, Dezzy and the rest. "`Kay, Sanny," They said. The party was to start at one o`clock.

The party rolled around – and we just . . . chilled out. I grilled a bit – yeah, that sounds kinda weird, but I'm a weird person. So I grilled a bit, and we just were dorking around, having a few laughs. The party tripled as the back-to-school/one more weekend party, along with Tim and I`s birthday parties. Tim and I were born six days apart on different sides of the country – he was born in Phoenix, Arizona, and I was born in Cambridge, Minnesota. He moved here a few years back.

My mom and my step-dad had supported my idea to throw our own party, without any outside assistance. I mean, fourteen is a pretty big step – we're being slowly shuffled into adulthood, which means we can handle running our own events. Everyone we knew – and liked – was there. Anastasia, Dan, Dezzy, Bekkah, Maja, Maggie, obviously Tim and I, John, Jesse, Sammy, Katie, Jonathan, Kevin, Cody came along for the ride, and a few of Cody's friends, too. I busted out my old-school boom box and played some tunes.

Overall, it was a good day. I brought out the cake I'd stashed away, and people pulled out presents for Tim and I. Bekkah got me a Yale lanyard – I'd love to go to Yale, and her sister's boyfriend is going there, so she asked him to get me a lanyard. Katie came up to me with a pretty big box – and I ferally ripped it open – it was a French Horn! She said she'd found it at a garage sale, and she remembered that I'd been looking for an affordable one of my own. I got a bunch of hilarious cards – Tim got a bunch of Gift Cards to GameStop, and a bunch of other gamer places. And boy was he excited! The party started to wind down at about four o`clock, and some people were talking of heading home.

And that's when it happened. I'd been showcasing my amazing French Horn skills, and there was this . . . _pulse _almost, through the air, and the sound fell dead. I shivered. Not a _cold_ shiver though – it's August, remember? More like a foreboding shiver, that played up my spine like a xylophone. From my Coccyx to the base of my scull, the entire situation made my fingers slip off the keys of the horn and make a weird, sharp sound. There had been a few adults jogging through the park – I'd noticed they were gone. iPods and armbands lying on the ground. Cars were stopped in the road. My heart seemed to skip a few beats.

_What the fuck just happened?_


	2. Lillies and Migraines and Ben Oh My!

A/N: I own nothing. Also – this chapter is written in Sanny's present – as in, the Shade-tastic, change-ridden Minnesotan town, roughly fifteen years later. In my mind, Shade _is_ somehow Universal. Sanny is roughly 29 (She beat Ella in the 'oldest-person-alive' thing. It'd be cool if they'd known each other . . .).

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_"What the fuck just happened?"_ I said into the little microphone. Shade proverbially bit his proverbial lower lip. Fifteen years, and it's still really weird to think that he's basically nothing but code and binary. I mean, he seems so . . . somehow _real_ and _fake_ at the same time.

I pulled back from the microphone. "Is that all you need? Or do I continue?" I asked, brushing my greasy chestnut locks from my forehead.

He was still biting his proverbial lip. "I still need more – but we can do it another time." He looked up at me, "I just want to know what went on."

I nodded. He disappeared. Everyone wants to know what went on. I look down at the book in my lap. It was a present from my fourteenth birthday. I'd had a few since, all stashed away from prying eyes, but when I got it, when The Change happened, I immediately jotted everything down. I guess it came in handy. The cover was green – this nice, agricultural green, like my eyes. It had – not a lock on it, you see, but this ribbon, and a metal buckle. The ribbon was white, the buckle was silver. The ribbon had green vines on it. I re-opened it. My scribbly handwriting was all over the lined pages. I had been reading it word-for-word into the microphone – of what I could read of my fifteen plus year old chickenscratch handwriting. I got up from the stool I'd been sitting on. I exhaled. I walked out of the little recording room and into the hall. Down the hall – past a few creepy robotic rats – and to my bunk. Bekkah, Dezzy, Katie and I shared a room. I had top bunk on the left, from the door. Bekkah had bottom. Dezzy had top on the right and Katie had the bottom bunk from the right. Dezzy and I are the shortest, and the top bunks are slightly smaller – both Katie and Bekkah are about 5'10", while Dezzy and I are about 5'4" – I'm actually 5'4", Dezzy's 5'5", really. I climbed up the little ladder thing, over Bekkah, and into my bunk. The room was nearly dark. I looked up to my plant hangers – begonias, moss roses, chrysanthemums, the works. Since the Overlords constantly change the weather, it's hard to keep plants alive when there's a two month wave of heat so that it's more dramatic when it rains or fogs up for a Myrmidon battle.

I touched a lily. I sighed. "I wish I could find Hyacinths . . ." I muttered. They're a breed of lily – with pretty spikes of bell-shaped flowers. I sighed again. I lay my head down – not bothering to change out of my carpenters jeans and my raggedy t-shirt. My eyes lowered, and my head seemed to explode with pain.

My eye twitched and opened. I look up – and there's nothing there. Only Bekkah, Dezzy, Katie, and me. God dammit – another migraine. I closed my eyes and clutched the sides of my head – I didn't want to get another Cortisone shot in the infirmary. I can never think straight afterwards. I rolled over onto my side. Things started spinning.

"Sanny?" I heard Bekkah ask, "Are you alright?"

I exhaled and said, through my teeth, "Just another fricken' migraine. I'm OK,"

She popped up from under the bunk, "No, you're not."

I held my head up and opened my eyes, "Yes, I am."

She looked at me weirdly, "What?" I asked.

She pointed at my right ear – the one I'd been laying on. I touched it, and my hand came back sticky with what smelled and looked like blood. I gave my hand a puzzled look. Bekkah looked at me, "I'm taking you to the infirmary. Whether you like it or not." She said, and grabbed my arm. I was too migraine-ey to resist her attempts, so in the end, I just jumped down from the bunk and walked out of the room and down the hall with her. We took a right into the infirmary. Ben was standing there amongst all of the equipment. Ben, y'see is our doctor/attending physician. His mom had been one of the town's doctors -- along with Katie's dad, Dr. Johnson. Katie wasn't interested in medicine, so Ben became our Doctor – and he was damn good to boot, along with convenient.

He looked at Bekkah, "Migraine?"

"Migraine," She said, letting go of my shoulders so I could sit down, "And she's bleeding from her right ear." Bens' brow furrowed.

"That can't be good," He said. He turned around to a metal cupboard full of vials and syringes. "I'll give you something to clot the blood so we can see if you ruptured a vessel or something." He said, turning around with a syringe and a vial in hand. He drew so-and-so many CCs from the vial and tapped the syringe a few times to get the air bubbles out. He walked over and plunged the needle into my upper left arm. "This'll take a few minutes," He said, sliding the needle out, "But then we can see what happened up there." He tapped my head as he disposed of the needle, but not the syringe itself. Ben handed me a few paper towels and told me to hold them up to my ear, which I did. After a bit, I pulled my hand away to see the blood. My blood. Not ichor, but red, warm, blood – filled with _my_ cells and _my_ DNA that makes _me_ who _I_ am – it doesn't make some Ferret more agile, or some Winger quiter.

It makes me _Sanny_. I'm Saint Sanny.


	3. Saint Sanny

A/N: I was intending on bringing up the Saint Sanny thing later – but I brought it up then instead, OK? OK, then.

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_I'm Saint Sanny._ I thought. It's a good name, because Sanny is technically not my given name. It's a portmanteau of my first and last names, which are Saint and Anthony. Saint + Anthony = Sanny – get it?

OK, I know it's weird that my first name is actually _Saint_, but go with me here – it was Mom's decision, not mine. Since I was really little, I've been Sanny Anthony – nothing less, nothing more.

My blood eventually clotted enough so that Ben could clear the blood out of the way and see what happened. He inserted a little probe into my ear, and looked over at a small screen on the wall. You could see the inside of my ear – and in the upper half, you could see a ruptured area covered in blood. He frowned, "Yup," He said, sliding the probe out, "You ruptured a vessel. I think it might have been caused by the migraine." He looked up at me, "Whenever this happens, you_ have to_ and I friggin' mean _have to come down here._" His frown was an angry one now, "Migraines can indicate a tumor, or something totally wrong with your brain." He paused, "Is the migraine still bad?"

I nodded. "OK," He said, walking over to the cabinet with the vials, "I'll give you a Cortisone shot and then you need to go back to your bunk and get some serious rest." He drew some fluid out of the vial and walked over, "You have major fatigue, and we don't need you collapsing in the middle of some mission. I mean," He said, plunging the needle into my right thigh, "Where would we be without Saint Sanny?"

Everything was muddled after that.

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I vaguely remember Bekkah dragging me back to our room, and then I assume I started chatting incessantly while Bekkah probably began to get really sick of me and my annoyance. Eventually, I probably went to sleep whilst asking Bekkah about my fictional argument with the Phantom of the Opera about whether Sweeney Todd was an Opera or not – I'm convinced it wasn't, while he insists that it is. I think I may just have totally crashed after that. Oh – Bekkah told me somewhere in there that I was apparently convinced that there was a robo-rat chewing my pinky toe off. There wasn't – my toes just fell asleep – so it was just me and my craziness. Fifteen years – and I'm very proud of the fact that I haven't totally snapped somewhere in there.

I woke up at 6 a.m. – and I was wondering where Shakespeare went when I realized that I was still totally out of it. I did some mental math – I'd gotten back to the room at 11 p.m., tossed and turned for half an hour, then Bekkah took me down to Ben, and I was there for an hour . . . then I was just being crazy for about two hours. Totaling it up . . . I got three and a half hours of sleep. Brilliant. '_Will Shade totally vaporize me if I sleep in? Dunno. Will I get yelled at? Yes. Do I care? No. Does he want me to totally fall asleep whilst killing a Myrmidon? . . . Ok that one's a trick question. What're the odds? Um . . . . Yeah, I'm sleeping in._' I put my head down to the pillow. It still had blood on it – mixed with drool, so I flipped it over. I put my head down again on the blood-free and drool-free side of the pillow and dozed for a good hour and a half.

Now, don't get me wrong – usually I'm an early riser, but this is an entirely different situation. Katie, Bekkah, and Dezzy get up at about seven-thirty or eight. It's about . . . it's getting close to seven-thirty. Katie's talking in her sleep – something about her non-existent brother that lived under the stairs when we were in eighth grade. Dezzy's watch alarm went off and everyone groaned. Katie's blonde head bobbed up from her pillow, "Why is it seven thirty? Someone turn back the clocks! I wanna sleep in."

"Yes – what a diabolical plan, Katie – We'll sneak around, turning back _all_ the clocks . . . and then, go back to bad to realize that we're no longer tired. More effort than it's worth, in my opinion." I mumbled, rolling over onto my left side, towards the wall.

"Do not want." Bekkah grumbled.

I smiled, "Want _this_, not _that_!" I laughed, we were playing our old junior-high game – if you could call it a game. "Voles make sad! Bekkah kill voles – all her fault!"

"Bekkah _not_ kill voles! Sanny's fault!"

Before we knew it, we were all wide awake and laughing at ourselves and our craziness. I went into a coughing fit and doubled over. All three of them looked at me, their eyes full of concern. This had been happening lately. I think I might have pneumonia – but, wouldn't have Ben picked up on it by now? '_Whatever,'_ I thought, finishing my business of hacking up a lung. I frowned, straightened up, and hopped out of the top bunk. I walked over to the vid screen by the door. I typed in Jesse's number. It pended for a bit.

His goofy grin appeared on the screen, "Hey, what's up? Anything wrong?"

"No – I just wanna know the weather conditions."

"Cold. Really, really cold."

"Awesome! No Ferrets to worry about – or Myrmidons, or anything else for that matter. Thanks, Jess. Oh," I added, "Is Dan down there?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Tell him to bring us some coffee." I said, tapping 'END'.


End file.
